51 Comments

Hunter, it would be nice to hear from Michael directly on why he stepped down from his League leadership positions, and what he thinks about Dr. Hill reintroducing the Confederate Battle Flag. Some of this may be available on Facebook, but I am unable to see much of that because a lot of people pulled the intellectually cowardly move of blocking me when I wasn’t getting on board the new direction bandwagon. What went on behind the scenes with both these developments is being much speculated about, and I think it would be better to have it out in the open than have a lot of people idly speculating.

If this has been discussed somewhere else and I have missed it, then please direct me there.

The problem is not that Southerners live in the past. This sentiment is entirely to our advantage. The problem is they don’t live far enough in the past. 1980 and Reagan is not the gold standard, but this is a matter of education and moving the ball, not ridiculing a healthy and useful sentiment.

It was a combination of things: he was sick of having his life picked apart by people who do nothing, he was burned out and needed to take a break, and most importantly he wanted to spend more time pursuing a new romantic relationship.

The CBF thing was a non-issue that only surfaced much later and fizzled out within days. It’s a non-issue because the people who complained the loudest about it never had any intention of using the CBF themselves. It was only a talking point and excuse to do nothing.

In any case, Cushman is still around. I hear from him all the time. I spent the last two months taking a much needed break myself. I expect he will be back to normal around spring when the weather warms up and demonstrations resume.

There’s a restaurant in Strasburg, Virginia that I’ve eaten at over the last 4o years, give or take a few years. The last time I was there I asked a waitress about the Confederate pictures on the walls, and she replied in a not very encouraging, “well, they were here when they bought the place.”

Hunter, I am aware of the party line. The speculation is whether there is more to the story. It is hard not to notice that Cushman stepping down preceded the reintroduction of the CBF. Did the former happen because the latter was going to happen? Did the former facilitate the latter happening? This is what people want to know.

That’s really the whole story. I’ve been in contact with Cushman for the last several months. He texts me all the time. I met up with him in SC less than two weeks ago. He was in AL with his girlfriend last weekend. He just took some time off during the winter to focus on his personal life.

As for the reintroduction of tho CBF, that had nothing to do with the Cushman situation. Hill proposed using it again at our rallies, but since so few people who go to our rallies wanted to use the CBF, he changed his mind.

“there is nothing of value in American democracy and Enlightenment liberalism”

Hunter, were the Articles of Confederation an Enlightenment document? Was the Constitution as originally intended? Was the Confederate Constitution?

As I have said before, reasonable people can have a rational discussion about whether a Republic is the best way to order a society. But calling everything you don’t like Enlightenment liberalism is not helpful or accurate. Is republicanism Enlightenment liberalism? That would surprise the Greeks and the Romans to whom the concept is generally traced. Is parliamentarianism Enlightenment liberalism? That would be news to the Englishmen who were practicing it long before the generally acknowledged start of the Enlightenment. In fact, parliamentary supremacy was established only shortly after the start of the Enlightenment.

Blowing off centuries of our inheritance with a wave of the hand pop history is foolish and makes people look silly and unserious.

FTR, my beef is not with you. You have been reasonable and attempting to play the moderator throughout this.

1.) I’m not interested in debating what the Constitution “really meant” or what it “really said.” I’ve seen enough to draw the conclusion that it was a failure. You already know that I don’t want to go back down that road.

2.) The Greeks and Romans had plenty of experience with failed republics and wrote extensively about the matter. The American Founders were sure they knew better and waved away their warnings.

3.) See Oliver Cromwell for an early experiment in parliamentarianism.

4.) I would say our inheritance is why we have landed in this disastrous situation. What is truly silly and unserious is putting our faith in a form of government that has failed and ended in a similar disaster everywhere it has been tried.

5.) I don’t have any beef here. I’m sure Vox and Schroeder have continued their gossiping about Cushman. Neither of them are in contact with Cushman. They don’t know anything about the matter. In the year and a half that I have known them, I haven’t seen them once use a CBF anywhere. I don’t know why they continue to bring up the issue when nothing has ever prevented them from using the CBF.

“but since so few people who go to our rallies wanted to use the CBF, he changed his mind.”

Where is that documented? I can’t see posts on Dr. Hill’s page.

“I’m not interested in debating what the Constitution “really meant” or what it “really said.””

You know who else says that? Liberals and progressives. I don’t disagree that the Constitution failed. That’s why we should have stuck with the Articles. But it is pertinent to the discussion whether the Constitution as intended was some sort of Enlightenment liberal plot.

“See Oliver Cromwell for an early experiment in parliamentarianism.”

Whatever one may think of Cromwell, he was most certainly not an Enlightenment liberal, proving my point that that fails as an all purpose smear.

“What is truly silly and unserious is putting our faith in a form of government that has failed and ended in a similar disaster everywhere it has been tried.”

OK, fair enough. But if the plan is not to restore a previous political order that has been subverted, which the use of the term Southern and South implies, it is fair to expect you to declare what system it is you have in mind. Saying we’ll cross that bridge when we get there or just being cryptic or whatever is a dodge. And quite honestly, you should rename yourself. Call yourself Southeastern United States Monarchists. Or the Southeastern Third or Fourth Wayers . Or whatever. Because using the word Southern and South in the service of creating some new order of whatever type is dishonest. It’s gravy training off the good will that people have toward the historic Southern political order for your own purposes.

Go out there and announce to your intended audience that you are authoritarian Bismarckians or whatever, and see how that flies.

1.) It was discussed on the Facebook page. I believe the conversation was subsequently deleted. I wasn’t paying close attention to it because I was driving home from Charlotte at the time.

2.) Sure it was. The whole document was based on the theory that the sole purpose of government was to secure individual rights. The state is seen as some kind of lawyer’s contract between radical individualists. That’s straight out of 18th century Enlightenment liberalism. All this talk about “equal rights” and all the madness that has spawned properly belongs to the liberal tradition.

3.) You brought up English parliamentarianism before the Enlightenment. I cited Oliver Cromwell as a forerunner of what parliamentary institutions would later unleash.

4.) I don’t believe the South is synonymous with the republican form of government. In fact, I have spent years showing otherwise – how the culture of the Deep South grew out of the plantation system which spread to South Carolina from the Caribbean. The North had the republican form of government too. The American Revolution began in Boston, but no one would confuse the North with Southern culture.

5.) I do believe that monarchy is the best form of government and that republics are plagued by perpetual bouts of social revolution and are ultimately suicidal. Honestly, I don’t want to live another republic, but we have had this debate before. You already knew all of this.

6.) If the South is synonymous with republicanism, it would be indistinguishable from New England and Americanism. We’ve gone out of our way to tell people that we are not “neo-Confederates” which is a term that was coined by our enemies.

I returned home from traveling today and saw this thread and will enter a few remarks.

Red writes: ‘…if the plan is not to restore a previous political order that has been subverted, which the use of the term Southern and South implies, it is fair to expect you to declare what system it is you have in mind. Saying we’ll cross that bridge when we get there or just being cryptic or whatever is a dodge. And quite honestly, you should rename yourself. Call yourself Southeastern United States Monarchists. Or the Southeastern Third or Fourth Wayers . Or whatever. Because using the word Southern and South in the service of creating some new order of whatever type is dishonest. It’s gravy training off the good will that people have toward the historic Southern political order for your own purposes.’

We use ‘Southern’ as a national designation much as monarchists, socialists, fascists and democrats in Germany use ‘German’ as their national designation no matter their political agenda. As Southern nationalists (SNs) our most basic political belief is that the Southern people constitute a unique national body distinct from other national and cultural groups living in the USA. One may be an SN democrat, fascist, socialist, republican, monarchist or whatever and still believe that the Southern people are a unique national group and should be independent. We may disagree on what form of government should replace the failed US system we currently live under. That is a discussion that often comes up and one which I have had with many SN activists. Most of them who have spoken to me favour either a limited republican model or a monarchist model. I have said many times that either model in a free South would be far superior to living under the rule of Washington, DC. As long as we have an ethno-nationalist government I can live with whatever precise structure my people choose. I am far less concerned about what that structure may be than I am increasing Southern national consciousness and getting our people off their butts and active for the cause of their own people and culture. Voting GOP or saying that we should bring back the Articles of Confederation is not going to cut it. What is on the line is far more important than constitutional arguments; we are in a struggle to ensure our people survive.

Hunter,
I don’t disagree with Cushman about everything, but the fact is he and others talked down to folks and banned them for disagreement. Some of the disagreements were minor, some major and others simply a disagreement of style, but Cushman expected you to tow 100% of his line or he and his small group would turn on the folks making accusations about their character or lack of doing something because they did not personally believe in standing on the side of the road holding flags of whatever type as doing anything that was going to make a difference. He would post continual whining about it on his timeline.

You are usually honest about things so on this at least be honest that Cushman and the League brought most of their troubles on themselves by their own bad choices of dealing with people and poor leadership decisions. Imagine what the difference would have been had folk been asked to just give the new thing a chance or for even minor input? Even if they decided to unilaterally make the decision about the new flag…paying members would have appreciated the gesture. That did not happen.

The League went from approachable to non approachable and rather than rightly allowing division to happen naturally Cushman and the rest of the new guard thought it fine to drive folks who could have been brought into the fold rather than driven away.

Even when attempts were made to ease the tension…Cushman wanted no part of it. It’s called pride and as the old saying goes…pride goes before destruction and a haughty look before a fall. I can’t say I dislike Cushman or anyone in the League, but I think there has been damage to their reputation and they do not appear consistent on very much.

As for the disagreements on the Confederate flag vs the League flag…even that was an accept the new flag or accept nothing. It was shoved down the throats of everyone else for the ideas of a few. The way it was handled been a failure and the fact that Dr. Hill is wanting allow other flags as should have been done all along shows even he sees it.

When the League decides to return to an open forum ( within reason ) and quite following rabbit inconsistent rabbit trails I believe they might be able to have more growth of a positive type and I don’t mean the type such as the Heritage crowd is up to. Until then…they are just another example of groups like the NSM or National Alliance that can’t seem to find a consitently strong footing.

BTW: talking about the Plantation South and the Golden Circle is an example of delving off into the past isn’t it?

1.) I never ran the League Facebook page. I briefly set up a CofCC Facebook page, but I quickly lost interest in it once I realized how much of a chore it was to babysit people and moderate flame wars, spammers, and crazy people in the comments. The same thing happened with Debating Southern Nationalism. It was just consuming too much of my time. I can’t say what happened on the League Facebook page because I was never responsible for it.

2.) I’m not so sure. A year and a half later, the same people are arguing about the same things. Why would it be any different? It’s been like that for as long as I can remember. Last year, the “beefs” playing out within WN reached such comedic levels – DragonballZ playing cards – that the SPLC wrote an article about the circus. I can’t remember a time when people weren’t constantly fighting with each other online.

3.) It’s true that Cushman wasn’t willing to forgive some of his critics. Too much bad blood there, I suppose.

4.) Feel free to go through all the photos of the protests from the last year and a half and you will find that about two dozens flags were used including the CBF in Oxford, MS and Lexington, VA. Anyone who wants to fly a CBF is free to do so. It is up to them to organize their own demonstrations and encourage people to participate in them. I mean … if someone wants to fly a CBF, who is stopping them? Certainly not me.

5.) We have an open forum here that waxes and wanes. Right now, the comments are spiraling into debates about “false flags” and what not. Free speech is good sometimes, but there are also times it just overwhelms discussions with garbage.

Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens wrote long memoirs after the war about what the Constituiton “really meant,” but in the final analysis, the real meaning was determined by who had the most soldiers.

“The whole document was based on the theory that the sole purpose of government was to secure individual rights.”

This is what some misguided conservatives say, but it does not reflect reality. The Constitution is not a particularly ideological document. It is a series of compromises hammered out by competing and often shifting (depending on the issue) factions. It was bound to be novel to some degree because it was creating a system in a new land in the absence of a monarch and an aristocracy. But its inherent novelty doesn’t make it necessarily revolutionary or wholly new. This is what people like Jaffa say. The Framers were obviously influenced by their British heritage. In hindsight it didn’t work out, but the South emerged from the Convention generally thinking they had gotten a pretty good deal.

The South is not synonymous with republicanism but a particular take on what the American polity is supposed to be like is an aspect of what people generally associate with the South and the Southern tradition.

The allegation then is that New England in particular subverted the republican form of government that the Framers and ratifiers left us with. This sentiment is all over the talk leading up to secession.

If monarchy is the best form of government, then why did God advise Israel against becoming one?

Also, I have never disavowed the label neo-Confederate. I would just get rid of the neo part. This is the kind of slur of the enemy that should be embraced.

I’m not exactly sure what you mean with #7, but if you mean that Cushman has been honest about his desire to create an entirely new non-republican order, then no, he hasn’t been at all up front with that. Whatever he has said has only been in some vague read between the lines speak that is mostly apparent to wonks who know what to listen for, whether his critics or his defenders. I suspected it early on because I recognized a certain pattern that such belief is a part of. Talk of plantations and inequality does not rule out republicanism, because that’s what we had in 1789.

1.) There is nothing particularly novel about the US Constitution. The foundation of the system is drawn straight from Locke, Montesquieu, and the English Whig tradition. It is nothing but classical liberalism grafted on to a few practical compromises like the 3/5ths clause or the electoral college. That’s the monster that has mutated into the system we have now.

2.) The South was already highly distinct before the American Revolution.

3.) Obviously, the North isn’t exclusively to blame for the failure of the republican form of government. If that was the case, then it wouldn’t have failed everywhere else it has been tried in the West. No, the truth is that the North was more republican than the South because the combined influence of slavery, white supremacy, and the plantation system wasn’t there to restrain its self destructive tendencies like it was in the South. See also Jacobin France vs. Saint-Domingue where the exact same scenario played out with far more serious consequences.

4.) Cushman has always been upfront about his skepticism of republicanism, but he would honestly prefer anything to what we have now. I have never seen him once say otherwise.

Sunny’s rhetoric, personal attacks and choice of words sounds awfully familiar. A lot I could say about that (including posting personal info and dirt) but I have no interest in doing so. This is the type of stuff which wears on folks on our side. Anyone who takes a leadership role in defending the interests of our people is repeatedly snapped at by people who claim to support our cause. It grows tiresome quickly – or at least it did to me. It is one reason I am no longer interested in being the lightening rod for attacks. Let someone with thicker skin than me take up this role. I am content with supporting for now.

Agree on those with the most guns won. Sadly, that will likely be what decides the next conflict also. In the meantime, how do you think a Monarchy has a chance of being installed in our lifetime or even that of our grandchildren? If you can’t answer reasonably well wouldn’t you say it’s just another intellectual discussion rather than a realistic goal?

Cushman is correct that Southerners are a unique National body of people…but they are and have always been varied in being unique. In places like Alabama you come close to having two different states in the same state. Northern Alabama is much different than Lower Alabama in many ways.

A republican type of government is all the South ever knew as an identity and likely the only thing any large movement of Southerners will join in large numbers. Possibly that was a mistake, but the Confederate government’s constitution was very close to the U.S. Constitution and few attempts have been made by any Southern group to install any other form of government.

I guess that is part of the confusion for some. If you are going to ask Southerners to follow you and then deride the form of government most who would join you believe in. How successful do you think that will be? Much of the time it seems like a just an intellectual orgasm discussion rather than a realistic and achievable goal.

I’m not going to pretend that the republican form of government is anything but self destructive when every single example known to me whether it is Jacobin France, Weimar Germany, or the modern United States has produced the same result in practice.

The system is based on numbers. It is inherently universalist and leveling and produces a perpetual state of social revolution. That’s not the type of society in which I want to live. It’s just one that I have the misfortune to live under.

PP, what you are describing is simply regional white nationalism. You could replace Southern with Pacific Northwest and say the exact same thing. As much as some people seem to wish they lived in Europe, we don’t. America was a British colonial nation and therefore our situation is unique. Our situation is more comparable to Australia or Canada than it is to Germany. While there were regional differences in settlement patterns and immigration patterns such as outlined in Albion’s Seed, the distinction between Southern and Northern whites, particularly prior to large scale Eastern and Mediterranean European immigration was not DNA. It was religion. culture, dialect, political beliefs, etc. What is your assertion of Southern nationhood, which I don’t disagree with, based on? Are you suggesting that we could distinguish a Southern white from a not obviously ethnic Northern white on the basis of DNA? Southern nationhood is a product of the whole religion, culture, polity, etc. ball of wax.

For that matter, to return to my point above, what separates the typical Southern white from a Canadian white even? It’s that we think they are a bunch of Godless socialists, not DNA.

1.) For the record, the vast majority of WNs are in favor of creating a “White Republic.”

2.) American conservatives glorify the “Old Republic” or the Confederacy because they have chosen to romanticize that time period for some reason or another, but neither is synonymous with our entire history as a people, particularly the Confederacy which lasted all of four years.

3.) The distinction between Northern and Southern Whites can’t be due to republicanism because both sections supported the American Revolution and the republican form of government that emerged from it.

4.) Obviously, slavery and white supremacy is what set the Southern historical experience apart from the North.

5.) The South existed before the American Revolution.

6.) Increasingly nothing. Americanism is overwhelming what remains of traditional Southern culture now that all the institutions which used to set the South apart from the rest of America have been destroyed.

“Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens wrote long memoirs after the war about what the Constituiton “really meant,” but in the final analysis, the real meaning was determined by who had the most soldiers.”

Hunter, you sound like a post-modernist or a deconstructionist or Lawrence Tribe for crying out loud. The Constitution really means only what it really means and nothing but what it really means. Having the “most soldiers” allowed the Constitution to be subverted.

It was a boring and tedious slog through constitutional history. The major takeaway is that the Founders created a government that collapsed into Radical Republicanism in less than two generations because they constructed a system that was supposed to be ruled by lawyers!

You could say the same of Norwegian, Swedish and Danish nationalism. All are racially White. There is very little genetic difference between such populations. The main difference is language, culture and tradition. In North America we don’t have the language issue, unfortunately (except with the Quebecers), but there are differences in culture and tradition. These are essential to identity.

‘America was a British colonial nation…’

No. America was never a nation. It was always a multinational concept based on the idea of combining different cultural and religious groups under the same central government. Robert Barnwell Rhett recognised this truth as early as the 1820s and spent his life opposing Americanism.

‘America’ combined two very different British colonial cultures: 1) a bourgeois society heavily influenced by egalitarian Enlightenment thought and religious fanaticism (Puritanism) and 2) the northernmost part of a plantation civilisation that stretched all the way down to Brazil. ‘America’ was always a bad idea.

PP, have you seen the Southern National Congress working document (or something like that) for the provisional Southern Constitution? I’m not sure if I was supposed to see it but I have. It’s basically the Articles of Confederation codified. It’s a Southern Constitutionalist’s wet dream. Why don’t you become a delegate to the SNC and pitch them Dugin or whatever. See how that flies.

Are you familiar with the semi-white nat American Third Position Party? Oh yeah, they changed their name to the American Freedom Party. Hmm.. wonder why they did that? Maybe because that Euro Third Position crap doesn’t fly over here. We have our own unique political heritage and there is simply no audience on the America right for much change from that.

Hunter, the South in general was more likely to view itself as a continuation of European society vs. the North which fancied itself some wholly new Shining City on a Hill. Mel Bradford is good on this issue. So no, republicanism alone did not distinguish the North from the South. It was the difference in how we viewed the nature of our project. The problem with the new guard rhetoric is that it basically says “Yeah, the Yankees were right and the South was wrong. The whole thing really was some revolutionary project.” First of all, that not historically accurate. And 2nd of all, it baffles me to no end how some people think that is a winning rhetorical strategy. “Yeah, you know that thing we’ve been arguing about for the last 180 +/- years. You were right.” Ummm…no they weren’t. We were and still are.

The South also bought into the notion that America was a shining beacon of republicanism and that European revolutionaries like Kossuth or Garibaldi would be wise to imitiate such a glorious modern republic. The Confederacy copied the US Constitution with only a few minor changes. Tho major point of disagreement was over how far Yankees were willing to go to the extremes of republicanism.

Slavery, white supremacy, and the plantation complex is what made the South so distinct from the North. The roots of all three trace back to the colonial era, not the American Revolution.

Red, I went to a few SNC meetings and it devolved into debates over arcane constitutional issues. It was a waste of my time when I could have been doing activism or at least having a bourbon and a cigar and enjoying myself. I was bored to death. And I don’t think there is much point in such a group until we have significantly raised Southern national consciousness.

I’m not sure what your hang up with Third Positionists is but that is between you and them. I would rather not get involved in such attacks. I tend to be friendly to those on the Right who favour ethno-nationalism regardless of their differences. I also tend to avoid discussions on constitutionalism because it bores me to death and I think it is a waste of time at this point. If we had broad public support and throngs of activists in the streets and were ascending to power then I would be far more interested in debates on the particulars of government structures. At this point my concern is mostly on promoting the national consciousness of our people – making them aware that they are a distinct people who are being destroyed by the present system. That is the work at hand, in my view. Making fun of those like Dugin who oppose the US empire and support traditionalists doesn’t help. Neither does making fun of ethno-nationalists in California who are quite friendly to the South.

What personal attacks? I stated you brought much of your criticism on yourself by making poor leadership decisions. Looking back, do you not agree?

A lot I could say about that (including posting personal info and dirt) but I have no interest in doing so.

I take most so called personal info and dirt with a grain of salt. It’s easily manufactured online. Why would you want to mention that you had personal information and dirt on someone? Have they done that to you? I haven’t seen it. All I have seen is disagreement with some of your beliefs and actions. Some of it does seem to go farther than others, but it’s how the internet is.

This is the type of stuff which wears on folks on our side. Anyone who takes a leadership role in defending the interests of our people is repeatedly snapped at by people who claim to support our cause.

Palmetto, I have read your stuff for a long time. Enjoyed some of it and disagreed with some of it. I have seen you snap at people and put them down. A true leader forgives, places their egos and their pride down and moves forward. You seem bitter in your response. Why take that route? I don’t claim to support your cause other than the idea of secession itself and Southerners are a unique people. Honestly, I’m not sure what your cause is in total. I think Red is making some good points. Don’t you think vetting is fair politics?

It grows tiresome quickly – or at least it did to me. It is one reason I am no longer interested in being the lightening rod for attacks. Let someone with thicker skin than me take up this role. I am content with supporting for now.

“No. America was never a nation. It was always a multinational concept based on the idea of combining different cultural and religious groups under the same central government.”

OK, fair enough. America was 13 colonies of varying degrees of similarity that all became independent at the same time. In hindsight, union was a mistake. Hence why we should have stuck with the Articles of Confederation. Of course the people cobbling this all together at the time did not have the benefit of hindsight. Would tighter regional confederations been in the best interests of all? Maybe? Perhaps then a confederation of confederations? Maybe. Who knows. But the inadvisability of union base on too great of differences does not make the thing an Enlightenment project. It makes the thing ill advised.

And your plantation society idea is simply ahistorical. The idea that the South had more in common with Portuguese Brazil and French Hattie and Spanish Cuba than we did with our fellow British Islanders on the American mainland is just silly. Besides, your plantation society idea throws large areas of the mountain south under the bus.

And while Yankee society was undoubtedly shaped by the unique perspective of Puritanism, by the time of the War the problem was not Puritan fanaticism but the fact that the Puritans had quickly lapsed into Unitarian apostasy. It was the South that was the bastion of Christian orthodoxy by the time of the War.

I wasn’t making fun of Dugin or the A3P, I was making the point that you are attempting to pound a square peg into a round hole. Your experience with the SNC illustrates my point perfectly. People arguing over arcane constitutional issues is your audience. That is who right-wingers in the South who are attracted to radicalism are and it is a product of our unique history.

Sunny, Red is talking about constitutionalism. I’m in agreement with HW on the matter. You are focused on criticising me for some reason. You did at least wish me the best. I wish you same, hope this criticism is over and I bid you good night.

The same conflict between the same forces played out in the Caribbean and Brazil with the same result. There’s no doubt either that American abolitionists were inspired by the victory of their British and French counterparts.

HW, what’s the difference between a republic and a constitutional monarchy? Is the UK or Spain in some way superior or not as decadent as France or Germany? If you believe that a republic and a constitutional monarchy are essentially the same liberal monster with different stripes, what type of monarchy do you have in mind? An old-fashioned “divine right” monarchy? In a post-religious, post-Christian age? You cannot be serious. If you really mean a form of enlightened ethno-fascism, I can sign up for that today, but this talk of a monarchy is puzzling.

In the UK, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and so on, monarchs are only symbolic heads of state. All of those countries are liberal democracies like France, Germany, the US, etc.

The republican system of government has inherent leveling tendencies because power is ultimately based on numbers. There will always be an incentive for some faction to gain advantage by campaigning to expand the electorate.

American history is just a series of waves that have leveled social hierarchies. We shouldn’t be surprised that “gender binaries” are under assault.

Nothing wrong with taking a break from things. All leaders and patriots need personal time for relaxation from time to time. If anything it recharges your batteries for future activism. It’s impossible for an awakened one to walk away. You can’t go back to sleep when your awakened. That’s the #1 reason why most people wont join our cause. They would rather stay asleep than awaken and have to do something about it. As for the conservatives. Many are living in the past. I agree. They honor Ronald Reagan like he was Jesus Christ but wasn’t. Just another liberal pretending to be a Republican. The majority of conservatives offer nothing for our people. Just compromise with the enemy. They hate Paleoconservatives just as much as Southern Nationalists. We offer a future for our people based on Freedom, Liberty, and Security for the Southern People. Deo Vindice !

Hunter, the problem isn’t republicanism. The problem is the modern state which sees itself as having a unitary sovereign for a particular fixed geographic area. This is a post-French Revolution phenomenon. The US under the Constitution was not a modern post-FR state. It was a union of sovereign states that gave up some of their sovereignty to the central government theoretically for the good of the whole but retained the right to withdraw that delegated sovereignty. It was Lincoln who transformed the US into a modern state. Donald Livingston is good on this issue. Google Donald Livingston “Secession and the Modern Sate.” Hopefully it is still available online. It used to be available at Lewis Andrew’s (name ?) site. But I shouldn’t have to be telling a Southern activist this. This is Southern Apologetics 101.

If you retain the modern indivisible state, you are going to have problems even with a monarchy. Theoretically a monarch is going to be more concerned about his kingdom and less likely to despoil it because he is going to be passing it on to his posterity vs. the plutocrats who purchase modern advanced democracies. (Most modern republics are actually pretty close to being democracies.)

Prior to the modern state, kings were sovereign and could act capriciously against individuals or groups, but contrary to popular belief there were competing institutions, such as the Church, that vied for people’s loyalty and the king relied on the support of patrons. A Medieval king had much less reach and much much less taxing power than does the government of a modern state. And he was opposed by competing sovereigns of their own realms whether geographic or otherwise such as the Church.

This is one reason why I don’t have much use for third and fourth positionism, fascism, etc. All are modern conceptions that take for granted the continuation of the modern state. We need to scrap the modern state, and this is why we must look to the past. We need dissolution and competing sovereigns.

The problem is squarely the leveling tendencies of republicanism. The first wave of leveling, which was announced by the Declaration of Independence (“all men are created equal”), targeted the British monarchy and aristocracy. The Articles of Confederation were still in effect when the leveling tendencies of republicanism swept across New England and began to eat away at slavery and other types of social hierarchies.

2.) The second wave of leveling was Jeffersonianism which abolished property qualifications for voting and resulted in universal White male suffrage. By the time Lincoln was being sworn into office, the Northeast was already being convulsed by third and fourth wave utopian social movements, all of which aimed to tear down social hierarchies, like abolitionism, women’s suffrage, and free love.

3.) I’m not buying into this notion that the central government is the real problem because the origins of several of these social movements (abolition, free love, women’s suffrage) can be traced back to Jacksonian America when the central government was still very weak.

4.) We see the same degeneration wherever we find the republican form of government. See Jacobin France and Weimar Germany. See all the present day Western republics or constitutional monarchies where parliamentary institutions are dominant.

5.) The British Empire broke apart – Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland are now independent from the UK – but all those countries are suffering from the same disease because they all have republican institutions like England. Do you believe anything would have changed in, say, Scotland, if that country had won its independence? Austria is independent from Germany. Norway isn’t a member of the European Union. It doesn’t matter.

6.) What if the South was independent like Ireland, but continued to have a republican form of government like Ireland? Would we still be sliding downward into oblivion like Ireland?

Re. the Declaration, while I don’t doubt that there was plenty of sympathy in the Colonies for doing away with a monarch and an aristocracy, that was likely not the intent of Jefferson’s phrasing which I admit was unfortunate. His likely intent was that the Colonists, who were subjects of the King, were equal to British Islanders, who were also subjects of the King, and not 2nd class citizens just because they resided in a Colony. That is what makes sense in the context of the rest of the document which proceeds to list a bunch of grievances against the King. But again, this is Southern Apologetics 101, and I shouldn’t have to explain it to you. What you are doing is repeating the arguments of the opposition. It is Jaffaites, for example, who want to make the Declaration this broad ideological plaything which it is not. See Bradford vs. Jaffa in Modern Age (I think) on equality.

That said, you have to play with the hand you are dealt. Once we won our independence, for better or for worse, we were a huge yet sparsely populated new country. How do you create a new monarchy and an aristocracy from scratch? Our mother country of England had a monarchy and an aristocracy because it had a monarchy and an aristocracy, if you get my point, and both were the product of a long history. Who’s going to be the monarch and the aristocracy in this new South you seek? Can I apply? I hear being a Duke is a good gig if you can get it. Good food. Servants waiting on you. Don’t have to work. Sign me up for that.

While it is certainly true that a lot of foolishness can arise from the masses, if we had a confederation or loose union, how would nuttiness in “burned over country,” impact us that much? (Keep in mind that with the benefit of hindsight I agree we shouldn’t have entered into Union with the North, but that doesn’t make the Union fundamentally Enlightenment. It just makes it unwise.) The Framers were very concerned about the dangers of the masses, which is why originally only half of one branch of the fed gov was actually directly elected by the people. Clyde Wilson makes a compelling case that the Framers actually miscalculated and misplaced their fear. While there have obviously been cases of mischief on the part of the masses, the bigger problem historically has actually been the Elites taking over and running things for their benefit, and the masses have often been the force for restraint and virtue and the ones getting screwed.